It's Never too Late to Talk!

This week I have the pleasure of working with an 18 year old man in The Son-Rise Program Intensive Program, the week before that, we had a 32 year old man,and before that, an 18 year old woman. Every time we have a young adult in our playroom, we hear them use new sounds and clear words.

On Monday, I was having lunch in the playroom with this lovely man (who is taller than me and weighs 200 lbs) and he reached across the table where we were sitting, took a piece of my gluten free sandwich and said "Ging". To people who may be reading this, you may think "Well that's not a word" BUT by the power of responding to that sound and taking into consideration what he was also doing at the time, an amazing thing happened.

I celebrated him and said "That sounded like Give me"(because he had taken my sandwich as he said it. He looked at me and gave me an enormous grin. So I took another piece of my sandwich and gave it to him quickly, modelling the words "Give me", the more I said it and gave him pieces of my lunch, the more he smiled and we had this great interaction.

The third time I said it, he said "Gimme" and continued to say it three times after I had modelled it for him with the action of giving him pieces of my lunch. He was seeing the power of his sounds because I was giving them importance and meaning, he was inspired to use his voice more and then made several approximations of "Give me".

I am so excited that at The Son-Rise Program we believe that it's never too late to talk, because if we didn't believe that, then we would never open ourselves up to the possibility that someone who is 18 and supposedly non-verbal will and in fact does talk.

Love to you all! x